Released months before lead Hiroko Yakushimaru’s Sailor Suit and Machine Gun, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s first groundbreaking teenage idol picture is a dazzling mix of special effects and blue-screen artifice, much like the film most know him for, House. Yuka (Yakushimaru) is a schoolgirl who discovers that she has psychic powers, just in time for the freethinkers of her school to come under attack by fascist mind-controlled Venusian kids led by the icy, telepathic Michiru. They enforce a New Order under the guise of academic excellence and discipline that may be the start of the planet going all bodysnatchers. 

It should come as no surprise, given who made this, that this movie goes all candy-coated, what with animation and art intruding into our reality whenever they want to. This was adapted from a novel by Taku Myamura, and it has no problems putting its emotions and politics right in the open. But this isn’t an art film; it’s a crowd-pleaser starring a woman who would become one of Japan’s biggest idols quite shortly.

The film is aggressive in its use of blue-screen composites that don’t strive for realism. Instead, they create a paper doll aesthetic where Hiroko Yakushimaru feels like she’s drifting through a living manga. Expect synthesized skies, hand-drawn lightning crackling over school hallways and dream sequences that bleed into the real world without warning. It’s a film where the background is just as likely to start moving as the actors.

Speaking of the house, in Koji’s home, check out the framed photograph of Yôko Minamida, the actress who played the aunt.

The Cult Epics Blu-ray of this film has a 2K transfer and restoration, and extras like audio commentary by film critic Max Robinson, a visual essay by Phillip Jeffries, an Obayashi poster gallery, trailers, a new slipcase art design by Sam Smith, a reversible sleeve with original Japanese poster art and a repro 24-page Japanese booklet. You can get it from MVD.

Shot entirely on location in Ireland, mainly employing Irish actors and crew, Excalibur was an essential film for the Irish filmmaking industry and helped start the careers of Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne and Ciarán Hinds.

It was also known as the Boorman Family Project, as several members of director Jonathan Boorman’s family appear: his daughter Katrine Boorman as Igrayne (Arthur’s mother), his daughter Telsche as the Lady of the Lake, and his son Charley as Mordred as a boy. It was shot a mile from his home, so he was able to stay home for the entire shoot.

Boorman has wanted to make the movie since 1969, yet United Artists saw the three-hour script as too costly and instead offered him The Lord of the Rings, which he did not make but did develop. He ended up using some of the work that went into that adaptation here and was potentially inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

He’d worked with Rospo Pallenberg on that canceled film (as well as Exorcist II: The Heretic and The Emerald Forest; Pallenberg would also direct Cutting Class), so he worked with him here to bring Malory’s Morte d’Arthur to theaters. Boorman said that his film was about “the coming of Christian man and the disappearance of the old religions, which are represented by Merlin. The forces of superstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious.”

I love Roger Ebert’s review of this movie, in which he said that the film was both a wondrous vision and a mess, “a record of the comings and goings of arbitrary, inconsistent, shadowy figures who are not heroes but simply giants run amok. Still, it’s wonderful to look at.”

It’s beyond gorgeous, actually, a movie that combines shocking gore with artistic flourishes, like the three ladies in white who attend Arthur to Avalon at the close. Boorman was also smart enough to cast Nicol Williamson as Merlin and Helen Mirren as Morgana Le Fay, two actors who had had a conflict when they acted together in Macbeth. He felt that tension would be seen on screen, and it certainly is. That said, Mirren claimed that the two became friends while making Excalibur.

It rained every single day of the shoot, which added to the film’s foggy look. It had many issues, as the first fight scene had to be filmed three times. It was filmed at night, and the exposure meter was broken, leaving two scenes underexposed.

Boorman’s career is pretty great. Sure, there are the big movies like Deliverance, but I love that he shoots for the fences and makes off-the-wall stuff like Zardoz and Exorcist II: The Heretic. Here’s to less playing it safe for directors, even if the misses turn out to be spectacular losses. I don’t think that can happen in entertainment anymore.

My initial exposure to this film came from Mad Magazine. Often as a kid, we wouldn’t see an R-rated movie until it was on HBO, so many of the films I’ve had to find as an adult were first seen through the eyes of Mad’s Usual Gang of Idiots. This time, Don Martin did the movie adaption. I’m happy to share a few panels with you thanks to Jesse Hamm on Twitter.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD and Blu-Ray release of Excalibur — buy it at the MVD links — has so much. It all begins with a brand-new 4K restoration from the original 35mm negative by Arrow Films, presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 for the first time on home video. You get both the theatrical and TV cuts, as well as extras like two new audio commentaries: one by Brian Hoyle, author of The Cinema of John Boorman, and the other by filmmaker David Kittredge, director of Boorman and the Devil. There’s also an archival audio commentary by director John Boorman. Plus, there’s The Making of Excalibur: Myth into Movie, a never before released 48-minute documentary directed by Neil Jordan during the production of Excalibur; new interviews with Boorman, Charley Boorman, creative associate Neil Jordan, production designer Anthony Pratt and 2nd unit director Peter MacDonald; Anam Cara, a new featurette on the working friendship of John Boorman and co-writer Rospo Pallenberg featuring a newly filmed interview with Pallenberg; Divided Nature, a brand new featurette by film historians Howard S. Berger and Kevin Marr; trailers; an imkage gallery and Excalibur: Behind the Movie, a 50-minute retrospective documentary in which cast and crew look back on the making of the film. It’s all inside a reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options, along with a collector’s perfect-bound booklet containing writing by Charlie Brigden, K.A. Laity, Kimberly Lindbergs, Josh Nelson, Philip Kemp, John Reppion, Icy Sedgwick and Jez Winship, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring two original artwork options and six postcard-sized reproduction art cards.

The bloody parrot of this film’s title is a legend of a bird born on the devil king’s birthday, when all the lesser demons gave him their blood so that it might grant three wishes to whoever discovered it. Those wishes, however, tend to go poorly. One example is Guo Fan, a government worker who has lost a treasure and begs the bird for their return. The prize does come back at the cost of his son’s life. He then monkey’s paw wishes for the son back, so his wife kills him and commits suicide.

The treasure disappears again, and that’s when fighters from around the world learn that if they find the parrot, they will become rich. Swordsman Yeh Ting Feng (Pai Piao) and constable Tieh Han (Tony Liu) start hunting for the truth, which ends with Tieh being killed and Yeh carrying his coffin like some Shaw Brothers Django. There’s also a Parrot Brothel where Pei-yu (Jenny Liang) works. There’s a whole hall of mirrors for her to show off her curves in.

If you liked the gross-out side of Shaw Brothers — Hex, Black Magic, Human Lanterns — then this is what you’re looking for. It also has plenty of sleaze and Wuxia moments to make one strange cocktail. Director Hua Shan has so many cards to deal you, from nudity to martial arts battles, sword fights, maggot eating, autopsies and demonic possession, to name a few. Who are we to deny the man who made Infra-Man?

I mean, this is a movie where a woman sews a man’s face onto a Frisbee and uses it as a weapon.

If that doesn’t make you watch this, is there any hope?

As a warning, this movie makes no sense whatsoever, and I’m not advising you to engage in mind-altering substances — you may not even need them — but if you can’t get high and watch a movie that combines Bava colors with kung fu and obscene levels of puking, then what are you living for?

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has a commentary by critic Samm Deighan. You can get this set from MVD.

Detective Wong King Sun is investigating the horrific and violent death of a little girl at the hands of her father, who claims that he was under the influence of a wizard. This takes the detective all the way to Thailand to learn more and, as happens in films such as this, to be cursed by a powerful magician named Magusu, who was supposedly played by an infamous Malay sorcerer. That’s what the credits say, and who are we to deny the words of Shaw Brothers or any exploitation studio when you get right down to it?

Wong King Sun decides to fight black magic; he needs a white magic monk. What follows is an entire movie of one-upmanship battles over whose magic is strongest, including a gut-churning moment when the evil magician grabs that pause that refreshes. Except that we’re not talking about Coca-Cola. This dude likes to sip from a big urn filled with unborn children and blood.

If that last sentence made you wince, turn back now. Bewitched is a ride through absolute chaos. It’s gorgeous, it’s frenetic, and it’s also unafraid to try and make you throw up throughout its running time. And if this one seems like it’s going to be too much, its sequel, The Boxer’s Omen, goes even further. Director Chih-Hung also made the equally blood-and-madness-filled Corpse Mania.

We all know that old Chinese chestnut of advice, right? Don’t take the virginity of village women, ghost them and then just move on, or you’ll be covered in body hair, unable to get it up, and eventually hammering a spike into your daughter’s head so that she stops being possessed and attempting to kill you.

“The moral of the story is to admonish people against casual sex and to be on guard against witchcraft.” That’s what the end says. As for me, I’m all about movies with neon colors, glittery bats that come to animated life and actual black magic rituals being used to entertain audiences.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has a commentary by critic James Mudge. You can get this set from MVD.

Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) has been assigned to the titanium ore mining outpost Con-Am 27, operated by the company Con-Amalgamate on the Jovian moon of Io. It’s rough work in a place where gravity a sixth of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere and the men are forced to work in heavy spacesuits with hardly any air. But there is money and productivity is up ever since the new manager, Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), was hired.

O’Niel is left behind with his wife and son leaving for Jupiter, but he does have a mission. That’s because several miners have died from getting stimulant psychosis and tearing off their suits. That may be because the miners are abusing polydichloric euthimal, a drug that allows them to stay awake for days at a time. The side effect? After ten months, they go insane.

With only one person on his side — Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) — O’Niel has to battle the corrupt mining company and their men, many of whom don’t want a chance to their way of life, no matter how wrong it is.

Outland is pretty much a Western in space, directed and written by Peter Hyams, who told Empire, “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, “You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western.” I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was. I wrote it and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?”

If you love this movie, I recommend the comic book adaptation by James Steranko.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD of this film has a new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films, an archive audio commentary by writer-director Peter Hyams, a new audio commentary by film critic Chris Alexander, interviews with Hyams, director of photography Stephen Goldblatt and visual effects artist William Mesa, appreciations and visual essays by Josh Nelson and Howard S. Berger, a trailer, an image gallery, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr, a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film critics Priscilla Page and Brandon Streussnig.

You can get it from MVD.